List of Aphorisms

A Jewish Deduction

The Bible dictates that “Thou shalt not seethe [=cook] a kid [= young goat]
in his mother’s milk”. To avoid any possibility of breaking that regulation,
the Jewish tradition ruled that it also applies to female goats,
to mature goats, and to the meat and milk of two completely unrelated
goats. It is also forbidden to eat the meat with fresh milk, and it
applies to beef and mutton as well (including mixing the milk and meat
of two different beasts). Finally, chicken, which are incapable of
milk production, may not be eaten along with any mammal’s milk either.

We are fortunate that most mathematicians were not Jewish. Otherwise,
it would have been forbidden to divide by all numbers between -1 and 1.

This bit used to appear on my signature for a short while, but people
got mad because it was too long, so I replaced it.

I Used to be Arrogant

I used to be arrogant. Now I’m simply perfect.

This bit was once said by a relative of mine…

Murphy’s Law

If the ancient Greeks had invented UNIX, Murphy’s Law would have been known
as Aristotle’s Law.

Had they invented MS-Windows, Murphy’s Law would have been known as the
Law of Socrates.

Microsoft’s Slogan

Microsoft’s slogan used to be “Microsoft - making it all make sense.”

Today it should be: “Microsoft - making everything make sense. Ours.”

And another twist:

“Microsoft - friendliness is our outstanding quality. No matter how much we
mess up your computer work, we will always consider you our friend.”

The American Lottery

The American Lottery - all you need is a dollar and a dream. We will take the
dollar, but you can keep the dream.

I don’t Believe in Fairies

I don’t believe in fairies. Oops! A fairy died.
I don’t believe in fairies. Oops! Another fairy died.

I don’t really know who said it, so it’s possible that I invented it.

Moses the Smiley

:)-<
+--

The prefix “God Said”

The prefix “God Said” has the extraordinary logical property of converting
any statement that follows it into a true one.

Deltas to “Shit Happens” according to Religions

Judaism: God knows you will do shit, does nothing to prevent it, but makes you take
the blame for it anyway.

Or alternatively:

God is all the shit, all the non-shit and all the intermediate demi-shits in
between.

Interpret the Past

Let’s interpret the past according to the present and not the present
according to the past.

(From an E-mail discussion with Ben Pfaff)

Computer Science and C Programming

“Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

“C programming is no more about computers than astronomy is about
stars.”

Shlomi Fish

A more experienced programmer…

A more experienced programmer does not make less bugs. He just realizes
what went wrong more quickly.

I promised, I forgot, I broke my promise…

I promised, I forgot, I broke my promise - just shoot me and get on
with it!

Potentially some famous last words, I also came up with this bit, and I’m
not sure if I heard it before.

The First Phrase that needs to be Taught

The first phrase that needs to be taught when teaching a new language is how to
say “Do you speak English?”.

The first thing that needs to be taught when teaching a new computer tool
is how to exit it.

If A is A and A is not not-A…

If:
1. A is A.
2. A is not not-A.
does it also imply that:
1. B is B.
2. B is not not-B.

C++ and Object-Oriented Programming

You have to be a relatively experienced hacker to get this joke. So don’t
worry if you don’t understand it.

A Better Alternative

Sometimes you don’t need to be familiar with a better alternative to know
that something sucks. Take Microsoft Word for example.

This was said by my friend

Good Student vs. Bad Student

The difference between a good student and a bad student is that a bad student
forgets the material five minutes before the test, while a good student five
minutes afterwards.

This was said by a lecturer of mine.

If it was not Clear

I hope that if it was not clear before, it is not less clear now.

Also by a lecturer.

An Apple a Day

An apple a day keeps a doctor away. Two apples a day will keep two doctors
away.

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Next Movie

[Discussing the shortage of IT workers as of 1998 on E-mail]

Shlomi Fish to Omer Zak: “Even the NSA doesn’t have enough programmers. But it
is not likely that they will have more, and that’s because Summerschool at
the NSA, may might as well be the name of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s next
movie.”

Omer Zak to Shlomi Fish: “And as opposed to I Know What You Did Last
Summer, it is going to be scary.”

Objective Philosophy…

Objective philosophy is like a pencil sharpener for one’s mind.

Taking a Turing Test

<sarcasm>
Sure I did. I sat at one point of an IRC channel, and someone
tested me. Eventually it was discovered that I am a computer, but it
turned out the other side was an Eliza program. Strangely enough, I could
not detect that the latter fact was true.
</sarcasm>

Hi, Sophie!

Jack: Hi, Sophie!

Sophie: Don’t “Hi, Sophie!” me.

Jack: Don’t “Don’t ‘Hi, Sophie!’ me” me!

Corollary of Godwyn’s Law

Shlomi, I’m considering naming a corollary of Godwyn’s law after you -
any discussion of anything is over when you mention Freecell Solver.

Muli Ben-Yehuda on #kernelnewbies (irc.kernelnewbies.org)

Muli: BTW, I think that any discussion only begins to gain momentum
when I mention Freecell Solver.

Shlomi Fish on #offtopic (irc.kernelnewbies.org)

Keeping an Idea to Yourself

There’s no point in keeping an idea to yourself since there’s a 10 to 1
chance that somebody already has it and will share it before you.

You are banished!

You are banished! You are banished! You are banished! - Hey! I’m just
kidding!

Crazy Opinions

My opinions may seem crazy but they all make sense. Insane sense, but
sense nonetheless.

Foreign Languages

Shlomi Fish: And unlike England, the accent does not change every 10
miles.

What Happened to Christopher Michael Pilato?

What happened to Christopher Michael Pilato?
Is he gone?
Is he gone for good?
Is he gone for better?
Is he gone for best?
Is he gone forever?
Will he return?
Who is Christopher Michael Pilato, anyway?

In Philosophy, as much as in software engineering,

In Philosophy, as much as in software engineering, you don’t get credit for
originality. What matters is the final product, not who came up with
the idea for each feature first.

He has a high degree of…

He has a high degree of idealism, a high degree of stubbornness, and an even
higher degree of inability to distinguish between the two.

I originally thought of something similar to that about
Richard M. Stallman who has headed the
Free Software Foundation and its GNU
project since it’s inception. He is known for his radical and non-comprising
views that combine both idealism and just plain stubbornness. Otherwise, he’s
a great and noble guy, and I had the opportunity of meeting and talking
him during his visit to Israel. (He is much more pleasant in real life than
online.)

Hacker Sees Bug

Hacker sees bug. Hacker does not want bug. Hacker fixes bug.

I was told that the natural continuation to this should be “Hack, hacker,
hack!”

95% of Programmers

Linus Torvalds: “95% of Programmers consider themselves in the top 5%”.

Shlomi Fish’s Corollary: “95% of Programmers consider 95% of the code they did
not write, in the bottom 5%”.

Linux - Because Software Problems…

Real Programmers Don’t Write

Real programmers don’t write workarounds. They tell their users to
upgrade their software.

If his Programming…

If his programming is anything like his philosophising, he would find 10
imaginary bugs in the “Hello World” program.

Blogging Memes

<rindolf> I’m siicckk of blogging memes.
<rindolf> You are this file type.
<rindolf> You are that type of cloth.
<jkauffman> You are this member of the Friends show
<rindolf> jkauffman: LOL.
<jkauffman> “January 4th, 2005: Just took an online quiz and it
turns out I’m a Joey type”

rindolf here is Shlomi Fish

Tcl is Lisp on Drugs…

Tcl is LISP on drugs. Using strings instead of S-expressions for closures is
Evil with one of those gigantic “E”s you can find at the beginning of
book chapters.

Jewish Atheists

Jewish Atheists are the only true Atheists. They beat the hell out of Goy
Atheists.

Yet more Jew-over-Gentile superiority, this time by me. In case you’re
wondering, Judaism is primarily a peopleship and the Jewish religion is
only a part of it.

An Original Philosopher…

An original philosopher knows the right combination of ideas to steal.

Corollaries to “To err is human…”

Here are some corollaries to To err is human - to forgive divine.

To err is human - to apologise - divine.

To have bugs is human - to fix them - divine.

To have bugs is human - to find them - divine.

Might be mad…

I might be mad. But I’m a mad genius.

If God exists…

If God exists and is the ego-maniacal, sadistic and helpless creature that
is described in the Old Testament, then we’re in deep trouble.

The bad thing about hardware

The bad thing about hardware is that it sometimes works and it sometimes
doesn’t. The good thing about software is that it’s consistent: it always does
not work, and it always does not work in exactly the same way.

Let’s suppose you have a table

Sophie: Let’s suppose you have a table with 2n cups…Jack: Wait a second - is “n” a natural number?

Chuck Norris and Perl 6

Chuck Norris wrote a complete Perl 6 implementation in a day, but then
destroyed all evidence with his bare hands so no one will know his secrets.

Chuck Norris Fact #2

If Chuck Norris had been born before World War II, there would have been only
one world war.

I feel a bit uneasy about saying it, but it is still kind of funny, for
those who like Chuck
Norris facts

We don’t know his cellphone number

We don’t know his cellphone number, and even if we did, we would tell you that
we didn’t know it.

Sometimes two bugs…

<rindolf> sarnold: you go to OGI?
<sarnold> rindolf: no; but my boss and a co-worker are professors there,
and other co-workers earned degrees there…
<rindolf> sarnold: OK.
<muli> sarnold, have you got one of those pesky things?
<sarnold> muli: just Bachelor of Arts… no Masters or Ph.D…
<rindolf> sarnold: B.Sc or B.A.?
<muli> rindolf, Bachelor of Arts is B.A.
<rindolf> muli: I know. But I was just checking.
<sarnold> rindolf: ah, you’re right, B.Sc… I chickened out on the language
requirements :)
<rindolf> muli: see?? LOL.
<muli> rindolf, sometimes, two bugs cancel each other.
<rindolf> muli: wisely spoken.
<rindolf> But mine wasn’t a bug - it was a sanity check.
-- #offtopic on OFTC

What do you mean…

What do you mean by “WDYM”?

Windows vs. Linux

Chen Shapira: spent 5 hours yesterday trying to get Windows to print
on my new wireless printer. It still doesn’t work. On Ubuntu it worked after
few minutes.

Shlomi Fish: Heh. Linux++ .

Chen Shapira: I’d do Windows-- , but this may result in an integer
underflow.

Pedantic People

I often wonder why I hang out with so many people who are so pedantic. And
then I remember - because they are so pedantic.

An Israeli Perl Monger

I Met a Guy in the Bar

I met a guy in the bar, talked to her and she gave me her phone number.

This is an anti-thesis to the fact that many Feminazis claim that using
“girl” for “a female guy”, is derogatory, despite the fact that it is very
common, and quite harmless. In Hebrew, there’s a perfectly good word for
a girl, which is not a female child, and since I think in Hebrew about 50%
of the time, I tend to import such things into my English speech. There are
much worse derogatory etymologies in Hebrew of course, but “guy”/“girl” is
not one of them.

While as a general rule I support the woman liberation movement, and believe
in equality of opportunities among the genders, I still don’t believe that
a Politically-Correct re-engineering of the English language to be
100% gender-neutral (and mostly only the English language, because most
other European and Semitic languages are not gender-neutral, and even have
genders for objects) is a good idea. I also don’t believe in applying
government control in order to “promote” women, and think that members of
both genders, and all other divisions should learn to cope with
discrimination and other abuse as they encounter it, instead of just bitching
about how they were discriminated against, or accusing the other party of
being “sexist” or “racist” or whatever.

So I’m going to continue using “girl” for a “female guy”, regardless of what
other people think. I also don’t mind using the term
nazi for someone
who’s unnecessarily strict or calling Black people “Negros”, which is
just the Spanish word for the colour “Black”.

Scary Thought of the Day

If Ayn Rand was born in the 1990s…

Very much inspired by what
Peter Ustinov said
that “If Botticelli were alive today he’d be working for Vogue.” (which was
a praise of the then held-in-much-contempt “Vogue” magazine). However,
I am taking it a little further. I hope Ms. Grimmie is not offended by me
comparing her, who despite her early low-quality cover videos, is almost
entirely perfectly
normal and wonderful in any way, to
Ayn Rand whose words,
deeds, and personal life, both exhibited many issues that seem appalling
in 2014, and were often quite objectionable even back then.

My point is that both Ayn Rand at the time and Christina Grimmie now, are at
the cutting-edge of influencing the world and taking it forward instead of
backward (despite whatever faults they both had or have). Back in Ayn Rand’s
time books and the early Hollywood feature films were the primary vehicle for
influence. In
this day and age, however, songs and other videos on YouTube, especially by
“independent” cover artists, are what bring the most long-term (and usually
positive) influence among the people who matter most (= the “Alphas”).

“Buffy
is not a nobody…” - about why you should believe in yourself, think you're
the most powerful person on Earth, and even the messiah, proudly say
that “I am [Insert Name and/or Nickname here]”, and realise that you can
“kick some ass”, change the world for the better, improve yourself and
what you achieve, and eventually become a “winner” (even if you do not take
first place at every silly-or-not-so-silly competition). References Christina Grimmie and
refers to her “Feeling
Good” song, which features videos of her fans from all over the world
doing some amazing (or some seemingly not so amazing) feats, and is a wonderful
tour-de-force and like a newer, and better,
“Make
your own kind of music.”.

Peter Ustinov quotes on
Wikiquote - many positively great quotes by one of the greatest action
heroes of all time. Action
heroes are also known as “geeks”, “hackers”, or even -
“amateurs”
which used to mean people who love what they do, rather than doing it only
for money, and not liking that.

Being convinced of being wrong.

I love being convinced that I was wrong before. That way I knew I
improved and am now wiser. Like the Klingon warriors say when it happens:
“What a great day it was for me to die!”.

Where to Find a Good Significant Other

You are much more likely to find a good significant other -
with a perfectly sound mind and body - in a
Sci-Fi/Fantasy/etc. conference than you are
in the middle of the wilderness.

A woman is a lady

A woman is a lady even if she is or was a porn actress or
a prostitute. Treat her with respect, be honest to her
— be a gentleman.

Carpe diem, motherfucker!! Do you speak it?!!

Here I combine the old Latin adage meaning something like “seize the day”
with the
«[Something], Motherfucker!! Do you speak it?!!» meme from the
“Programming,
motherfucker!!” site. It is
originally from the film
Pulp Fiction,
which I watched, but only recalled the scene after
running into the “Programming, motherfucker!!” site.

It sports a photo of two ladies sitting together at a café, smiling, which
is what I believe “carpe diem” is all about — not the
pseudo-Utilitarianist
belief that one should maximise product. To quote
Chazal “He who saved one
soul, has essentially saved the world entire”. Make one person happier today,
and if one other person enjoyed your work (however lame or small), it was
a blazing success.

Holocaust Denial

( Photo of a white picket fence surrounding a pastoral field, and a caption
“The holocaust did not happen, so shoot me, bitch!”.)

I was talking the other day with an online friend about Paul Graham’s
What You Can’t Say and then
he mentioned that in some countries, you can get imprisoned
for denying the holocaust. Then I said “So that's one thing you can't say” and
so now I'm saying it (although it seems the world is ready for it).

Just for the record, I am an Israeli and my late (and loved) grandfather on my
father's side (who was a Polish-born Jew) lost track of most of his family
during World War II. However, I think whether or not the holocaust happened is
just a
mystical "a-point" without respect to "The Point" of WWII history, which is if
we look at the global picture we will see that the only reason for all the
killing and destruction was that Hitler will be able to feel good about himself
and satisfy his weak self-esteem ( only temporarily - the long term he felt
worse), and it was entirely pointless. Focusing on the historical details is
losing the forest for the trees.

I took the picket fence image from MediaWiki commons and this captioned image is under CC-by too. Share and enjoy.

I used GIMP, Inkscape and gwenview in the preparation of this image. Thanks
goes to UnconventionalIT, and Ankh from #gimp for some assistance.

Note to Americans: you may not find this captioned image provocative or
offensive, because in the United States, there's much less taboo against
treating the acts of the Nazis as holy. ( This may be a good thing. ) This
image is primarily intended at Israelis and Europeans as intellectual activism.

Have you heard of Plato? Aristotle?

Philosophers at ancient times were essentially a form of entertainers, and
were treated with the same contempt as we now treat actors, models or most
recently (as of 2014) — reality T.V. show contestants, or independent music
(covers/etc.) artists on YouTube/etc. And as the busts indicate, they did
some modelling even back then.

If you like what you see here, or have any comments, suggestions or
corrections, feel free to E-mail me about it. I’d love to hear from you. If
you have found what I did helpful or entertaining, please consider
helping.